Urban Sugaring in Philadelphia
When you think of Philadelphia, you don’t think of maple syrup. Right? Cheese steaks and scrapple, sure! (Also, Rocky and the Liberty Bell.) But not maple. There’s now a chance that might change, thanks to the folks in Philadelphia’s East Oak Lane neighborhood engaging in urban sugaring!
While this culinary connection may be new, the historical link between Philadelphia and maple is old. When William Penn planned the city in 1682, he included plenty of green space. That green space, including green space in East Oak Lane, supports a large number of sugar, black, silver and red maples. In the 1700s, Philadelphia Quakers organized the Free Produce Movement. The free produce movement was a consumer boycott that discouraged purchasing products made with the labor of enslaved people, and urged folks to choose, among other things, maple sugar over cane sugar.
Of course, like the rest of us, Philadelphians have been enjoying 100% pure maple syrup for a long, long time. But, until recently, they weren’t making much of their own. That has begun to change.
Introducing Oak Lane Maple
In January of 2020, a Philadelphian named Jethro Heiko, a community engagement organizer and activist made his first gallon of maple syrup. (Among Jethro’s projects: helping the people of the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood in Boston save Fenway Park.)
A tapped maple on a busy Philadelphia street.
Like so many a beginner, he had a nice big sugar maple in his yard, a propane burner, some hotel pans, and curiosity. A year later, during that long COVID winter, Jethro founded Oak Lane Maple, and proceeded to shepherd his community through tapping 40 neighborhood maples and producing 20 gallons of the good stuff.
Jethro started by walking around his neighborhood in the dead of winter to identify maple trees by their bark (hard but not impossible). He then went door-to-door to ask if the homeowners would be interested in a cooperative arrangement: free syrup in exchange for sap. Jethro got a lot of yesses! Oak Lane Maple got access to 20 trees this way, and 20 more with permission from Awbury Arboretum – among them, sugar maple, red maple, black maple, silver maple and Norway maple. (Maple syrup can be made with any kind of maple.) Each tree was tapped with metal taps and connected to food-safe, 5-gallon buckets with tubes.
The Urban Advantage
One of the benefits of urban maple syrup making? The trees are huge. “We didn’t tap a tree smaller than 30 inches in diameter” said Jethro. “And some were in excess of 40 inches.” These trees, which are situated in a long-time gardening district with rich soils, tend to have large crowns. The result? Productivity. Oak Lane Maple did discover that 10 out of their 40 trees were “duds.” However, there were some trees that produced 5 gallons of sap per day for multiple days per week for each week of the season. That’s a lot of sap!
For Oak Lane Maple, it’s all about the community of sugaring.
A Sweet Partnership
Thankfully, Jethro had made a connection with Stockton University, a school in nearby New Jersey that has been looking into the viability of local red maple syrup production. In exchange for data, Stockton offered to pick up and boil up to 150 gallons weekly and donated some supplies to the Oak Lane Maple effort. Not knowing whether the latex content would ruin the syrup, Jethro kept the Norway maple sap separated. He otherwise mixed the saps and relied on Stockton to help with the boiling. In the end, Oak Lane Maple made 20 gallons of 100% pure maple syrup, held several community events and earned some media attention. (In the end, Jethro reported that the Norway maple syrup “tasted fine.”)
Oak Lane Maple also brought people together and taught them something new about their surroundings. Said neighbor Kirsten, “I’ve been to maple syrup events and I never applied it to my brain, that I have a huge maple tree in my backyard that I can get maple syrup from.” Neighbor Sam was “glad [his daughter] could be a part of it at such an early age,” and hoped it was “something she can look forward to every year.”
For Jethro, bringing people together to appreciate and take ownership over their own resources is what it’s all about. When Stockton asked if he’d take a job continuing his work with Oak Lane Maple and replicating it in five additional communities in nearby South Jersey, Jethro accepted!
Beyond Philadelphia
While Oak Lane Maple is certainly unique, Philadelphia is not alone in urban maple syrup making. The Tap O.N.E. project in Burlington, Vermont and the Sommerville Maple Syrup Project outside of Boston, Massachusetts are two more examples from the 2021 season. Since then, we’ve also learned about the Native American Community Development Institute’s community sugaring project in Minneapolis, Minnesota. If you know another example of maple syrup being made in an urban area, please let us know so we can celebrate it!